Category: Westerdale
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Old Ralph
11th-century wayside cross, often confused with Young Ralph, a taller cross standing a couple of hundred metres further north-east by the side of the Castleton to Blakey road. Even that prolific author Alfred J Brown got it wrong. Ralph was supposedly the bishop of Guisborough and the cross is a memorial to him. It is…
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Esklets
The very upper reaches of the River Esk, an island of old improved land surrounded by moorland. Land which somehow managed to escape being classified as Access Land under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 even though it was last farmed in the 1950s. Activity now seems to be devoted to the grouse…
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Young Ralph
Walked into Bransdale Mill yesterday with a Duke of Edinburgh training group in what turned out to be a glorious day. The journey out today turned interesting. The cross known as Young Ralph is probably medieval and to me always looks better in wintry conditions. It is perhaps best known as the logo of the…
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Dale Head Bee Boles
Do other animals exhibit man’s craving for sweetness? I guess bears do, or at least Winnie the Pooh does. It is said that the refinement of sugar originated in the Indian subcontinent in prehistory. The Crusaders brought it back to Europe and but it wasn’t until the development of sugar plantations in the West Indies…
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Young Ralph Cross
I thought I had seen the last of the snow on the North York Moors. It is, after all, April! The Young Ralph Cross is perhaps the best-known wayside cross in the National Park, it appears on their logo. Supposedly erected by as a guidepost by the nuns of Rosedale Priory in the 13th-century after…
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Esklets
Esklets, the source of the River Esk, at the confluence of three streams. Perhaps once the most remotest farmstead in the whole of the North York Moors. But the last farmer left in the 1960s and the farmhouse demolished. The rubble slowly becoming lost in the undergrowth. Just a few broken roof tiles and shards…